Decline and fall

Via David Langford, a comprehensive and rather wonderful accounting of the various reasons advanced for the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Langford’s summation is worth reprinting in full.

It seems to me that practically everything—from the Iraqi war to the downfall of Big Engine to delayed BSFA mailings—can be explained by some subset of this list of 210 reasons for the fall of the Roman empire, as enumerated in Professor Alexander Demandt’s Der Falls Rom (1984)—which needless to say I have not read in either German or English, but which some kindly journalist has summarized. Read and marvel:

On a related note, last month the mises blog linked to an audio lecture titled “Military Decadence in Ancient Rome” (mp3 format) by Daniel McCarthy (Washington University). It sounds intelligent to me but the only history course I’ve taken started with medieval feudalism, so caveat emptor.